1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to information delivery systems and, more particularly, to efficiently providing information to clients such as set top boxes (STBs) having differing capabilities.
2. Description of the Related Art
There is a wide variance in the hardware capabilities of set top boxes (STBs) coexisting on a single radio frequency (RF) network, such as a cable television or satellite television distribution system. STBs receive data associated with, for example, an interactive program guide (IPG) application operating within a middleware environment. The data includes text-based descriptor fields for each program, such as program title, rating, description, presentation times and the like. Lower capability STBs typically are unable to perform searching and processing of such data, unlike higher capability STBs or other clients. Also, the data processing capability of STBs is typically less than the data processing capability of servers which house data before transmission to STBs. Furthermore, similar searching and processing of data is likely to be requested at a plurality of STBs.